Israeli forces suppress protests demanding release of Tamimi women

Dec. 29, 2017 8:26 P.M. (Updated: Dec. 30, 2017 2:46 P.M.)

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces suppressed a peaceful protest outside the Ofer military court in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah on Thursday, as protesters, many of them women, demanded the release of 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi and her mother Nariman from Israeli detention.

The General Union of Palestinian Women had organized a peaceful protest against the Israeli detention of Palestinian women and children, near the Ofer detention center.

Clashes erupted as Israeli forces suppressed the protest, causing many to suffer from severe-tear gas inhalation including head of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Committee, Minister Walid Assad, head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) Qaddura Fares and the former governor of Tulkarem Abdullah Kamil.

Israeli soldiers assaulted journalists and attempted to prevent them from covering the protests by trying to confiscate their cameras and targeting them with tear-gas bombs and stun grenades, witnesses said.

Head of the Legal Committee of the women’s union, Haitham Arrar, said that the message of the union and Palestinian women “is a message of solidarity with women detainees in Israeli jail and with all prisoners, to send a message to the entire world that the [Israeli] occupation has not spared any Palestinian of detention as they are also detaining children of both sexes, women and elderly.”

Arrar stressed that the union is working to highlight the suffering of children and women in Israeli jails under the increased detention and trial of children in a flagrant violation of international laws.

Arrar called upon the international community to take actions to end the “systematic punishment policy” used against Palestinians.